I know not all of you are Facebook fans, but John and I both like it in a low key sort of way.
We never reveal anything private or very personal. I have found a few old school friends and love the keeping up to date with friends that you maybe wouldn’t normally hear from except at Christmas. We occasionally discover what our ‘young’ are up to, and I have also enjoyed keeping in touch with some of our former Tom’s and Douglas’s Barns guests that over the years turned into friends.
John’s posts are nearly always photos of birds (mainly swallows when the swallow season is here), animals, insects and landscapes. His latest snaps are of dragonflies. He tends to shy off anything remotely personal, even when an appreciative reaction to a flattering remark or someone’s news might almost be considered polite.
So imagine my surprise when a post on my Facebook page informed me quite dispassionately that John Fuller-Sessions had got married two days ago. It seemed I was the last to know. It wasn’t clear whether he had – eventually – got round to tying the knot with me, romantically deciding to renew his vows but forgetting in an absent minded sort of way to include his wife of 50+ years in the plan or whether he had in fact turned out after all these years to be a bigamist.
Several friends have expressed concern on my behalf. John’s story is that he was updating his Facebook profile and pressed the wrong button…
Should I feel reassured?
Belated congratulations to you both; I knew it was this year but did not know the date.
Just a thought. Pressing the wrong button can easily happen, but how many people realise just how dangerous this can be? We are so used to ticking dialog boxes to get on to the next step, e.g. when buying something online or downloading from the net. Pressing a button is like your signature on a contract with the full force of the law. Pressed by mistake and you may have little recourse for the consequences! I once accidentally sent a personal message intended for a friend to my solicitor who had a similar name which came up on the address box as a prompt and I clicked without checking.
You are absolutely right, Mike. We have one friend who sent the wrong email with pretty disastrous results! I always check, rather nervously. Facebook profiles are another thing again as John discovered. It seems hard to ensure you have the correct date for the entry. I had this problem when trying to add my school in Zimbabwe – I was shocked to see I appeared to have gone back to school again.